Martha Rhodes spent more than twenty-five years working as a senior-level executive at several major New York advertising agencies. That all changed in 2009. Despite a seemingly ideal life as a successful career person, wife, and mother, Rhodes succumbed to depression and overdosed on Xanax and alcohol in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Her book, 3,000 Pulses Later, describes her challenges with undiagnosed and untreated, drug-resistant depression and her struggle to find an alternative to the six prescribed antidepressants that failed to relieve her symptoms. A large focus of the book is her experience with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), which has relieved her depression symptoms, medication-free, for over ten years.
In addition to her U.S. speaking engagements, Rhodes has presented internationally in the United Kingdom, where she spoke in Wales and in England at the University of Nottingham’s Institute of Mental Health’s official TMS launch. This event was attended by patients, members of the UK National Health Service, and researchers from Nottingham, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities and provides the most recent example of increasing international acceptance of this highly successful therapy.
Martha currently devotes her time as a TMS Patient Advocate to patients who contact her from throughout the United States, and from as far away as Europe, South America, Canada, the Middle East, Australia, South Africa, and India through emails, her website www.3000pulseslater.com. She is on the Patient Advisory Councils for the Neuronetics’ NeuroStar Advanced TMS Therapy and Hartford Hospital’s Patient and Family Advisory Council. In September 2015, Martha completed a major public service video project with Emory University’s Office of Technology Transfer called Put A Face On It. www.ott.emory.edu/about/success/NeuroStar
Rhodes is a 2016 PM360 ELITE Winner in the Patient Advocacy category. The ELITE (Exceptional Leaders Innovators, Transformers and Entrepreneurs) represents the most influential people in the healthcare industry.
3,000 Pulses Later has been cited in The New York Times (online and print), Psychology Today (online), and U.S. News & World Report. Rhodes has appeared on ABC-TV, NBC-TV, The Daily BUZZ TV, Fox News TV, and Sirius XM Radio. She has written articles about treatment-resistant depression and TMS for online and offline media such as CNN.com, The Saturday Evening Post (online), HealthyWomen.org, and TMS Neuro Health Centers.
She currently devotes her time to patients and health care professionals throughout the United States and internationally as a patient advocate, speaker, writer, and book shepherd. She is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston and has done post-graduate work at Harvard University Extension and The School of Visual Arts in New York. Martha lives in Connecticut with her husband of fifty years and their rescue dog, Josie. They have two grown children and three grandchildren.
“I want to create more awareness that depression is a chronic medical illness—especially treatment-resistant depression — and encourage patients to find the therapy that works for them because there are new alternatives to traditional treatments.”
